Upgrading from TFS2010 to Visual Studio 2012 Team Foundation Server in production

Upgrading from Visual Studio 2010 Team Foundation Server to Visual Studio 11 Team Foundation Server beta is very easy and as we have seen, fully supported in production. Today I got the new bits and I an going to upgrade our Northwest Cadence production server.

Once it is off you computer you can start with the Visual Studio 11 Team Foundation Server upgrade.

Installing Visual Studio 11 Team Foundation Server

Installing TFS 11 is quick and easy. It takes only a few minutes, although you may need to make sure that you have the latest updates and service packs for all of the affected products as I would always recommend that you do.

Figure: Accepting the Visual Studio 11 Team Foundation Server

You will see that even the Install has become cleaner and less cluttered. This may change when for the release, but it looks pretty good.

Figure: Only a few customisation points

The only customization is the folder that you are installing to and I ALWAYS use the default.

Figure: make sure that you get any updates

This is checked by default, but it is always good to get all of the updates before you start.

Figure: Upgrading to .NET Framework 4.5 Beta

Now the install only takes a few minutes, but .NET 4.5 takes up most of that.

Figure: As usual, .NET installs require a restart

Always prep the machines with .NET prior to starting if you can. If you do that, you are doing this in minutes.

Figure: After a reboot the install kicks of again

After that the install automatically starts after you log in and carries on.

Figure: After the install the the configuration window will pop

Now that you have everything installed you need to begin the configuration. In TFS 2010 you had to stop here and install the Service Pack but as we just got these bits there is no SP, so … wooohooo..Done.

Upgrading to Visual Studio 11 Team Foundation Server

But not really. Now we need to get to the real hard stuff. I am upgrading our current TFS 2010 server, so I need to select the Upgrade Wizard. There are many other options but I don’t need them for now.

Figure: Select “Upgrade | Start Wizard” to get going

Once you get into the wizard you will only see the options and be lead through the story that you want. Make sure that you select the correct story, and often the “Advanced” wizard is the most appropriate.

Figure: The only options for Upgrade is to select the database

You need access to the database server for the next bit.The upgrade wizard is going to upgrade the schema of your server and you need “sysadmin” in order to do that. I forgot and had to get Steven Borg to add me.

Figure: Select your TFS 2010 database

The wizard will check to make sure that you have a data base that you can import. It will list all of your DB’s but you can only do one through the interface. There is a command line for upgrading subsequent databases if you have more than one configuration database.

note: You only need to do this ONCE per TFS Instance and not per team Project Collection. It will upgrade all of your collections.

You then need to specify the TFS Service account to use. Now I forgot this as well and had to ask Shad Timm (get a blog Shad) to get the password , which he provided with the speed that only Shad can.

Figure: Configure the TFS Service Account

I have very few circumstances where anything other then NTLM is not appropriate and as we have a separate data tier and app tier I have to use AD credentials. To be honest every time that I have used “network service” I have run into many problems. Just suck it up and use AD Credentials.

Figure: We are going to configure reporting

If you have TFS basic (or express) then you don’t get reporting, but this is an enterprise solution that has both reporting services and analysis services to configure.

Figure: Select the server that is running Reporting Services

In my case Reporting Services runs on the same server as the App Tier and it prepopulates the data. Remember that we already selected a TFS 2010 configuration database, so everything except the accounts is pre populated.

Figure: Your reports database might not be on the same environment as Reporting Services

You need to select your warehouse, but enter your server and it will find it.

Figure: Select your Analysis Services database

My Analysis Services database is sitting on my Data Tier so I have to enter that server name here. I love the “Test” feature on the pages so that you make less mistakes.

Figure: Enter your TFS Reports Account

Figure: Setting up SharePoint is also easy

We use an Enterprise SharePoint farm so I will be leaving it configured as is.

Figure: Review your setting

If you have not done a TFS upgrade since 2008 you will love the readiness checks that the TFS team added. It looks at all of the things that it can to make sure that we catch any errors NOW, before we go any further.

Figure: All of the readiness checks then run

The readiness checks run…. and…

Figure: F*ck, I need to update SQL Server.

My SQL server does not have SP1 or the required CU…. let me go do that….

Now that you have fixed the problem, you just need to rerun the Readiness Checks to before you can Configure your server.Figure: If you have express you get upgraded

Figure: Depending on your hardware the upgrade may take some time

Some updated take longer than other, but it really depends on your feature usage and hardware.

Figure: All of the collections are upgraded

Each collection is upgraded individually after the configuration database has been completed and these again depend on the size and complexity. In this case the first collection has very little data and was upgraded quickly, but the second one is the main collection so will take a little longer.

Figure: Warning for Lab Management

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[2012-02-2919:55:43Z][Warning]Team Foundation Server could nottear down the existing deployment rigs.

Did you know that the DOD has made it illegal to do waterfall? For the first time in many years the Department of Defence (DOD) in the United States had made a major update to its procurement rules. They can no longer be held accountable for holding up our industry, and being culpable for its inability to move towards agility. The last vestiges of the old ways are gone.

To my understanding there is a frustrating misunderstanding of reality when one thinks that the Product Owner can reject a single story at the Sprint Review. This is the fallacy of the rejected backlog item.